Of Font & Film: Stuck in something

There’s a flow to life, a graceful, fluid stream, a great river of dreams snaking into the sacred sea from which we came.

Michael Lister | Special to The News Herald

There’s a flow to life, a graceful, fluid stream, a great river of dreams snaking into the sacred sea from which we came.

Lo que es mio, (What is mine?)

Lo que es de Dios, (What is God’s?)

Lo que es del rio (What is the river’s?)

Living in the flow, in the zone, brings a peace so profound that life seems almost effortless. This is what the Taoist call wu wei —- actionless action or effortless effort —- and it happens when we’re aligned with and swimming in the great current of life instead of foolishly fighting against the it.

Of course, the flow can stop —- and often does.

We’re flowing along just fine and suddenly we encounter a barrier that dams us up and causes us to face plant into the rear end of life.

And the elegant, sweeping curve of life comes to an awkward, abrupt stop.

This can happen in so many different facets of life — we’re fired from a job, we encounter health issues, lose a friend, become disillusioned with religion or politics or culture —- but seems to happen most often in our relationships. We get entangled, trapped, caught.

Sometimes our relationships lose their flow. Sometimes it’s our way of relating that is mired down. But often it’s because the relationship itself ends.

When a relationship ends before we think it should, when a spouse or partner tells us they just can’t do it anymore and we refuse to accept it, refuse to let go, we’re said to be stuck in love.

This is where Bill Borgens finds himself.

In the smart, charming light new film, “Stuck in Love,” Bill Borgens, a veteran novelist three years past his divorce, can’t stop obsessing over, let alone spying on, his ex-wife, who ignominiously left him for another man. Even as his neighbor-with-benefits, Tricia, tries to push him back into the dating pool, he remains blind to anyone else’s charms. Meanwhile, his fiercely independent collegiate daughter is publishing her first novel while recoiling at the very thought of first love with a diehard romantic; and his teen son, Rusty, is trying to find his voice, both as a fantasy writer and as the unexpected boyfriend of a dream girl with unsettlingly real problems.

Everyone in “Stuck in Love” is, well, stuck —- but not in love.

We can be stuck in need, in lust, in want, in desire, in the past, in ideals and fantasies, in pride and fear and unforgiveness. But we can’t be stuck in love.

Love frees. Love flows. Love heals. Love lets go.

We get stuck when we let our egos control us. We get stuck when we refuse to accept what is, accept how things really are, and instead childishly demand our own way.

Suffering is the imperative in the mind for things to be other than they are right now.

Serenity comes from acceptance.

Stubbornness is often another way of saying we’re stuck on stupid.

When we get stuck, it’s not love we get stuck in. It’s a million other things —- none of them love, all of them substitutes and counterfeits for love.

In fact, when we get stuck, it is only love that can release us, free us. Only love can save us.

When we get stuck, what we need to get unstuck is not without but within us.

As Rumi says, “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”

Michael Lister is a writer living in Panama City. More information on him is available at www.MichaelLister.com.